NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

Hi all,
I had a well running installation of Ubuntu-Mate 16.04 on a workstation with 8TB raid / 2 x Nvidia GPU 1070 / 128 GB RAM. When configuring some of the RAM for temporal storage the system crashed and I was unable to recover it.

I thus tried to boot Ubuntu Mate 16.04 from an USB stick and received the error message "NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for 10s" with X running from 0 to 7. This message repeats forever. I then tried booting plain Ubuntu 16.04 with the same outcome. Finally, I could boot Ubuntu 14.04 without receiving this message but I want to install again the more recent version.

What might be incompatible between my hardware and ubuntu(-mate) 16.04? How can I install it? What is the reason for this problem? I found some posts on this error message but none was related to the version of Ubuntu installed. I am aware that the Nvidia cards may be involved but when booting from the USB stick no driver is yet installed and still I get the error.....
Thanks for hints, D-E

Re: NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

I don't have a solution for you, but I am running into the same issue. Brand new computer (i7-7700K + 2 x GTX 1080 + 64GB RAM) that runs Windows 10 without any issues cannot boot using 16.10 or 17.04 alpha 2 from USB drive. All the information I have found is related to people getting this error message after their computers crash--not prior to installation.

Re: NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

Hi,
Still no progress: I have now tried running ubuntu-16.04, ubuntu-mate-16.04, ubuntu-mate-14.04, and plain ubuntu-14.04 from stick and the only one that definitely run was the latter. I could also install Debian but I need a release that has all the features that are necessary to run GPU acceleration....
Again, help is greatly appreciated....
D-E

Re: NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

Hi all,

You can usually get around this issue caused by Nvidia/Nouveau weirdness at boot by using the boot parameter 'nomodeset' when installing, and on first boot after installation. When booting the live disk (in UEFI mode), you'll get a GRUB menu. Go ahead and select 'Install Ubuntu' and press `e` to edit GRUB before boot. Change the `linux` line:

So, you're just appending it to the `linux` line. Press F10 to boot in this configuration. You might need to do the same thing after the initial boot. In one case (a Sys76 Bonobo) we had to boot using Recovery Mode, enable networking, then resume normal boot where we could install the Nvidia drivers from our repository, though you could certainly use the graphics-drivers Nvidia repo as well. After installing Nvidia drivers, the system would reboot without issue.

Re: NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

Hi april-system76,
thanks a lot for pointing out this solution! I'll try it from a stick first! Do you have any idea why the problem DOES NOT SHOW UP with plain Ubuntu-14.04 but does so with Ubuntu-16.04, Mate-14.04 and Mate-16.04?
best, D-E

Re: NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#X stuck for Xs!

I am getting the same error running the newest ubuntu for x86 and I get the cannot access perfct msr popup and then won't boot from disk when I don't install using bochs android emulator with i7 4370hz (I think) and won't boot with newest version of limbo x86 qemu